Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.

Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!

So...got Sonic Generations (PS3) in last night from Gamefly. It's nice, but I'm not certain I'd buy it for full price. I think $30/$20ish would feel about right to me. The framerate still gets in my way of fully enjoying the classic Sonic stages, but the modern ones don't bother me as much. I've beat Act 1&2 of the first three worlds, but can't really figure out where to go next - do I have to do all the challenges that appeared? I hope not - I don't want to do ghost races and such, I just want to see the next levels...

It's super pretty though - I'm constantly surprised at how much care they must have taken on the levels. I will admit though, I understand they are staying true to the classics but I really, really hate when Sonic goes underwater, it just isn't fun for me.

Haha, don't worry, you only gotta do three of the challenge levels, one above each level, and that unlocks a key. Pretty sure you can do it as Classic or Modern, and that'll give you a key. 3 keys and you move on to the boss. You can bang em out pretty quick, most of the challenges are short, but when I was trying to unlock the whole game on a new console quickly, I'd just do the ghost levels. ;D

You should definitely check the challenges out though - some get pretty creative with the existing levels. One of the last world's challenge levels is probably my favourite part of the game. ;D

In other news, I ordered that Sonic: Genesis hardback comic thing about a year ago, when the estimated release was Dec 11. Forgot all about it! Just arrived today. Been reading with my baby bro. Ain't bad.

I hate the music (the composition is nice, but the synths, eurgh) but while there are a few weird moments with the sun glare casting shadows at the screen, that Oil Desert level really does look nice. I hope it's just the one act that looks like that, though; 3 spent in that orange and grey place would get old fast.

On the physics, don't think it's really fair to say before playing, but it does look like there's more weight to Sonic now. To be honest, I loved Sonic 4 my first run through, so yeah - day one for me. Just hope it'll keep me playing a little longer this time. ;D

The levels just feel derivative. We just had the big nostalgiafest with Generations, so I don't to see this game aping a bunch of old setpieces and mechanisms from the older games.

Well, the Sonic tropes have been repeating for 20 years now. You can say it's a throw-back or derivative to have a water ruins zone, an ice zone, a desert zone, and a sky fortress zone, but that's better to me than having a bunch of real-world zones like we had with Sonic Unleashed. Some of the zones feel very different enough to distinguish themselves from other zones which share their tropes. This is especially apparent and true with the final zone of the game,

Spoiler:

Death Egg Zone. Despite the zone appearing in 2 other Sonic games, it still feels very different from every other version of Death Egg Zone ever.

It also features a level gimmick not seen in any other Sonic zone, and it's pretty awesome for it.

Also, the bosses are probably the best part of the game. Each one is awesome, with the final boss being incredibly cool looking. The final boss design reminds me of something from Sonic CD.

Spoiler:

Metal Sonic's race in Death Egg Zone is also better than his race in Sonic CD or any of the rival races in Sonic Generations

This is supposedly an early beta, and a few things apparently will change between this release and the final. What they have here, however, is pretty fun. I would love a full game made out of this engine. It kinda sucks that the game doesn't lock onto Sonic 4 episode 1 proper, but that's a result of them essentially starting from scratch. Luckily, the 4-act long Episode Metal proves to be cool enough to make up for it. It's 4 acts - one from each zone in the game, using Sonic 4 episode 1 assets, using the new engine. They seem similar to specific acts from Sonic 4 episode 1, but their layout are changed to accommodate the new physics. In some areas, the games are completely different. In all, it winds up feeling more like locking Sonic 2 onto Sonic & Knuckles, than it does locking Sonic 3 onto Sonic & Knuckles. It's still a cool diversion, though. All in all, given 5 zones, and the additional 4 bonus acts from episode Metal, Sonic 4 Ep 2 feels like a much more complete game in terms of content. The red rings in this build are useless, they don't work yet, but they'll undoubtedly unlock extras in the full version. Those red rings provide incentive to go back and explore the alternate paths - and there are a bunch of branching paths in this game.

There are still areas they could improve - The physics are basically the same as Sonic Generations 3DS, which is really good, but the top speed, especially when rolling, is still slower than it was in the originals. You can still go pretty fast in areas of this game but you never fly like you could in Sonic 2. The music is more catchy, but the instrumentation isn't much improved. I imagine they'll continue using this instrumentation until Sonic 5. Even though there is a lot to play in this game, one more full zone would have been nice. The 5th zone is really short, even though it's pretty awesome, and episode metal is a full zone's worth of content, but you still want more.

I still like what they're doing here, and I hope Sega keeps it up. This is not quite as good as Classic Sonic in Sonic Generations, but it's pretty close. I don't want Sega to abandon this style of gameplay again, and I'd love to see this series continue along side the main-console 3D Sonic titles.

Episode Metal is like a mini version of Episode 1 with new levels using the old themes, then? I thought it was the full original game, with Metal Sonic Episode 2 physics.

Not really fair to say Episode 2 is still 'borrowing' from the Classic games, at least not in the direct rip way that Episode 1 did. I do like the look of the levels we have seen so far, especially the ice/carnival one. Wonder if there are many more combination themes like that?

Also, note of interest, the credits suggest that 3 different teams worked on Sonic 4 episode 2: Dimps, Tose, and Sega Asia, who apparently did the majority of the work. Seems Sega Asia developed the engine themselves, likely with help from Tose, and Dimps just did the level layouts and art.

This could possibly signify Sega slowly parting with Dimps. Which I'm fine by - Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors, and Sonic Generations has shown over and over again that Sonic Team is way better at level design than Dimps is, both with 3D Sonic and Classic sonic. I would love to see Sonic Team make a full game with this engine, their level layouts in Generations were awesome.

I would like to know which format the art assets use. Is it just a pixel format with an alpha channel? - Would make sense, this the easiest to work with I would assume. Cool would be if it would be a vector format - so you could scale it to whatever resolution you desire - But this would limit the people who could contribute because not everybody knows how to work in this format.